This is a record so richly involving that it promises to throw up fresh delights weeks, or even months, down the line. [Apr 2010, p.113]

Verity Susman's wayward, fragile Nico-lite vocals will either delight you or drive you nuts. [Mar 2003, p.102]

Drew's work is lyrically dense and confrontational, but the music is blissfully rich and specious. [Sep 2012, p.100]

The album is drenched in the cosmic swirl of warm synths and dreamy atmospherics. [Dec 2017, p.106]

This is a soul-baring and lovely record. [Dec 2018, p.108]

Betters his 2015 landmark, Integrity. [Mar 2020, p.119]

It's thrilling stuff and a reasonable guide to where the Klaxons are heading with Surfing The Void, this dense, doomy, psychedelic album with its tough punk edge. [Sept. 2010, p. 112]

One of the finest of his career. [May 2020, p.109]

Beautiful stuff. [Jun 2020, p.94]

By the time he gets to the whiskey-soaked lament 'Whispered Words' you'll be wishing you had a back porch. [Mar 2009, p.93]

The sense here is of two artists drawing creative sustenance from new light. [Jul 2018, p.112]

The 21-year-old's eclectic debut oozes attitude, his pithy social commentary binding together sonic excursions into breezy funk-punk, poundshop hip-hop and indie tearjerkers. [Sep 2017, p.115]

An impressive pop artefact, propelling its creators clear of the current garage-rock morass.... It's the sound, if not the smell, of teen spirit. [May 2003, p.111]

Braver Than We Are is the best thing either has done in decades, addressing as it does both Meat Loaf's less powerful voice and [Jim] Steinman's enormous back catalogue. [Oct 2016, p.109]

A spirited version of Wild Mountain Thyme salutes his influences but it's Head's own songwriting that draws attention. [Nov 2017, p.113]

The sort of tunes The Beautiful South mislaid on the nation's pub jukeboxes years ago, often tinged with a soulful alt-country lilt. [May 2005, p.116]

Dare may share some vocal similarities with Jeff Buckley and James Blake, but the overall effect is utterly distinctive. [Apr 2020, p.106]

It's business as usual, but when business produces songs as lovely as November's sumptuous indie-pop it's hard to resist. [May 2020, p.110]

Ambitious and beautifully wrought, Dear River should mark Barker's entry into the big leagues. [Sep 2013, p.98]

Pleasingly, this is the Wire's best new music since their glory days in the late '70s. [Aug 2008, p.145]

Confirms her as the most compelling new pop star around: half doomed romantic, half mordant cynic, with a distinctively conflicted vision of how love, fame and America work. [Mar 2012, p.94]

It's a lush, moving affair. [May 2015, p.103]

It's a multilayered, detailed affair, which proves that 27 years after their debut, their edge is still keen. [Aug 2017, p.108]

A lovely, tender album. [Jun 2015, p.110]

A marvellous, surprising comeback from a forgotten talent. [Mar 2003, p.103]

Her aching sincerity’s another major plus; that she can get away with Caged Bird’s Stevie Wonder-isms and Fallin’s near plagiarism of James Brown’s It’s A Man’s World speaks volumes.

London Sessions is a solid memento of the group at their peak, albeit closer to a Peel session than a live album. [Feb 2011, p.120]

It's an impressive return. [Sep 2019, p.111]

A racket in the best possible way. [Sep 2016, p.108]

Seems to focus more on Dizzee's virtuosity as a producer than a rapper, and teems with exotic noises, odd rhythmic loops and unexpected shifts in mood. [Sep 2004, p.112]

Kimbra has created a sparkling, witty debut that hymns commitment at every turn. [Sep 2012, p.102]

Building on 2015's explosive comeback album Freedom, War Music offers further proof that the gamble paid off, with Blood Red mixing Marxist doctrine and surging riffs to stunning effect. [Dec 2019, p.114]

Hip hop heavy weights stop squabbling for long enough to justify their star billing. [Oct 2011, p.116]

Textbook soft rock. [Jul 2006, p.111]

A great leap forward. [Jan 2007, p.148]

Princess Nokia's genre-surfing might be attention-grabbing, but it's her honesty, openness and clarity of expression that make her a musician you can really invest in. [May 2020, p.111]

Despite the weight that hangs on its shoulders, Crushing doesn't feel defeated, rather it's the sound of a fearless songwriter putting the past to bed and regrouping stronger than ever. [Apr 2019, p.112]

An intimate, close and enjoyably ambiguous record. [Jun 2020, p.94]

Kings of Leon needed to make a very specific sounding type of album in order to seize their moment, and that they have done, entirely successfully. [Oct 2008, p.134]

It's the multi-layered harmonies and busy, overlapping rhythms that stick. [Jul 2020, p.104]

It's one of the least boring records you'll hear this year. [Nov 2008, p.108]

It's a mode that has little time for novelty or subtlety but plenty of potential to crowd-please on both sides of the pond. [June 2019, p. 108]

Staples's fire is undiminished. [Jul 2019, p.114]

It's a thrilling ride with an artist who keeps everyone on their toes. [Aug 2017, p.108]

Daltrey climbs inside every song, slaps it around a bit and makes it his own. [Jul 2018, p.111]

The quiet, melodic Curse Your Branches - think American Music Club with superior melodies - is an open-veined, self-lacerating look at his break-up with God ("You expect me to believe that all this misbehaving grew from one enchanted tree?" he asks on the brutal Hard To Be), his subsequent alcohol issues ("All this lethal drinking is to forget about you") and his estrangement from his young daughter. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

Wonky restores the Hartnolls' reputation among electronic music's greats. [May 2012, p.103]

Reserve space and time for it. [Feb 2005, p.104]

Joyous and rammed with hits: it's worth the wait. [Oct 2018, p.111]

Confidence seeps through Coldplay's eighth album. It's a thrilling new start, a daring way to kick off their second chapter. [Jan 2020, p.104]

Autolux balance droney post-rock and electronics with rare skill. [Sept. 2010, p. 113]

Princess Nokia's genre-surfing might be attention-grabbing, but it's her honesty, openness and clarity of expression that make her a musician you can really invest in. [May 2020, p.111]

A slice of West Country meets Southern soul glory to rival anything Auerbach's ever been associated with. [Apr 2019, p.118]

Another quixotic foray into New Age vibrations, all hazy Balearic moods and flashback to '50s exotica. [May 2018, p.112]

Kingdom Of Rust is Doves' defining work, an album of bold adventure. [May 2009, p.108]

Heroic. [May 2015, p.100]

Ellis taps the pulse of his surroundings in manner akin to Massive Attack's Mezzanine. [Aug 2020, p.111]

A highly original two-disc set that as precious as it sounds, adpats poems from such diverse sources as ee cummings ans Gerald Manley Hopkins. [May 2010, p.124]

They pare their sound back to delicate guitar work, shimmering ambience and heart-tugging harmonies, making them now as easy to love as admire. [Jun 2010, p.120]

An effortless marriage of modern dream-pop loops and classical 70s guitar lines, it entertains notions of Thin Lizzy and Steely Dan, while producer Chris Coady lends the whole a steadfastly modern feel. [Jun 2011, p.120]

His most poignant and accessible work to date. [Feb 2003, p.96]

His fourth LP proves his strongest to date, a mesmerising meditation on uncertainty and unease, which bridges the gaps between urban poetry, post-rock and brooding electronica. [Sep 2017, p.117]

Another gem. [Jun 2012, p.104]

A powerful and almost gleeful celebration of the horrors of the world. [May 2002, p.114]

That they've been forgotten for 30 years seems almost a crime, because they've got just about everything real soul music needs. [Feb 2004, p.118]

A collection of B-sides, Peel Sessions, alternative takes and unreleased tracks which reveal that the Californians were undergoing a spell of prolific creativity bordering on incontinence. [Sep 2015, p.121]

For the most part Hot Cakes leaves you with the sense that The Darkness' reinvigoration will delight those longing for rock to rediscover the fun button. [Sep 2012, p.106]

His songs draw on his folk-rock roots, only to detour down mysterious and memerising byways. [Jan 2017, p.111]

Texan sluggers The Sword shoulder-barge the deadly "hipster rock" sobriquet out of the way with a patchouli-splattered update of Black Sabbath's noise. [Sept. 2010, p. 113]

There is no waste here. [Sep 2007, p.96]

The sound is at once distinctively British and uniquely African, encompassing vivid live field recordings and heavily processed electronica. [Dec. 2001 p. 126]

The Texan singer and guitarist's fifth album feels like a one-man exploration of African-American music. .. The blues is in safe hands. [Apr 2019, p.110]

Soft soul, gibbering jazz fusion and the cyber-futurism of overseer Flying Lotus still works a collective shock. [Jun 2020, p.96]

This is the sound of someone surveying a world turning to ashes. In other words, anyone looking for upbeat club songs to soundtrack adverts may be disappointed. [May 2018, p.111]

Gloomy and wonderful. [Apr 2013, p.105]

In its own flawed, modest, off-kilter way, this might turn out to be one of the most accomplished records of the year. [May 2015, p.98]

Assured and dignified. [May 2002, p.119]

Although III doesn't offer anything to rival [2014's Beggin For Thread] in songwriting stakes, it does manage to mine thrills from an adventurous production. [Aug 2019, p.108]

The result glitters like diamond.

In a word, charming. [Feb 2011, p.123]

Vlautin's literary side is very much evident, with the lyrics of these 11 songs effectively vivid short stories populated by bruised characters. [May 2014, p.108]

An innovative and pretty irresistible record. [Oct 2015, p.101]

Smith's greatest talent lies in his surreal, witty wordplay and avuncular tone, and the way they combine to make what could be the usual rap anger sound both intimate and strangely uplifting. [Feb 2005, p.95]

This is graceful and elliptical songwriting. [Mar 2015, p.109]

Stunning. [Mar 2012, p. 96]

They've simply honed their sound to an aggressively melodic point. [May 2015, p.104]

Funny Girl is so good it makes you think a parallel career as huge stars ought to be in the offing. [May 2012, p.103]

As ever, it's wildly inventive. [Jul 2017, p.108]

As a whole, The Harrow and the Harvest maintains a singular mood and sense of atmosphere -- its terrain, musically and emotionally, is stark and bleak but beautiful. [Aug. 2011, p. 118]

Inevitably some of the surprised factor has worn off for their second album but it's still an exhilarating collision of ideas. [Sep 2012, p.105]

In the comparatively safe musical surrounds of 2005, he stands out as a compelling and utterly unique artist. [Oct 2005, p.119]

Songs Of Experience will likely go down as a late-career classic. [Jan 2018, p.104]

Life lived close to home, outside any metropolitan notions of centre, is continually apparent in these intimate melodic reveries, which mull romantic vicissitudes via folk-influenced acoustic and sometimes molten electric rock. [Dec 2015, p.113]

As singularly off-kilter as the time-travelling she seemingly blew in on us. [Mar 2020, p.114]

It's a thing of grief-blasted beauty, and Gibbons brings tender pain to these words of lost children and mothers, her voice rising and falling impressively to the the occasion. [May 2019, p.112]

Off With Their Heads affirms the undying pleasures of smart, catchy pop music does well. [Oct 2008, p.137]

Which Bitch? is a blaze of glory. [Mar 2009, p.103]

So convincing does the Boston-based siren inhabit this cut-off, gothic world that it's hard not to be sucked inside the darkly compelling likes of 'River Of Dirt.' [Apr 2009, p.107]